


lake stories

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Series: flood lake [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series), UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Canon-Typical Violence, Drowning, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25039528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: Floatsam and jetsam from the merfolk 'verse
Series: flood lake [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1813411
Comments: 15
Kudos: 22





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm having too much fun with this AU and the worldbuilding to let it go soooooo

\----

When the lake is new it takes more than it gives.

Those who belonged to the lake first, the ones who had been standing when it made them swim breathe easy, instantly. The ones along its shores do not. Not always.

The lake is young, the lake is greedy, the lake takes what it is given in last breaths and it decides to give back.

A boy steps off a cliff, away from gunshots. The lake takes him.

A boy is bleeding and bruised and held in the water. The lake takes him. 

Possibilities and futures are stored in the breath, thinks that which is the lake, it has taken these, and it will give new ones back. 

A boy hangs in what would have been air off the edge of a sheer cliff, breathing in water.

A boy curls on the shore, still bruised and bleeding but breathing. 

The Lake has taken, the Lake has given. That which is the Lake begins to wake.

\--

Amos wakes up on the shoreline.

He’d dragged himself there after the men left him in the shallows, still bruised and bleeding. He’d been lucky no one had thought to make sure the drowning took, to leave a knife in his back or a bullet in his head.

(amos is breathing in the water the lake was still in his lungs as he hacks and coughs into the fresh dry air he is breathing too)

He sits up, slowly and clutching at aching ribs. It’s still dark, of course, moon as high and bright as it was when the drunk rat bastards broke his damn door down. The lake is back to being a still, glassy black, moonlight glinting in sliced up disks on the surface. 

The men were real goddamn drunk, apparently, to have forgotten you need a body to claim the bounty. Though they likely thought it weren’t like he’d be going anywhere since-

And the terror comes back like a wave, drowning him a g a i n-

Amos shakes and curls up on the shoreline, sandy dirt coarse beneath his cheek and the water streaming down his face is just from his goddamn hair. The world is so fucking quiet apart from the quiet not-sobs wracking his chest, the soft rasp of the waves on the shore like the damn lake itself were breathing with him, like it hadn’t- Amos cuts the thought off. His nose is bleeding and he thinks it’s broken and one of his ribs might be too. He lets himself stay a huddled pile of misery for a while despite all the screamin in the back of his head to move before the shit fuckers came back, cause they’d make a right fuckin racket coming down the slope in the quiet night. 

He drags himself upright long before the dawn comes, stumbling between the trees in the dark, away from the lake.

(for now)

\---

It takes Matthew a slightly ridiculous amount of time to realize that he could leave the lake.

It just never really occurs to him, that this new form of his could be shrugged off and retaken in turn. In his defense the first few settlements he runs across are either deserted entirely or far too deep and sparsely populated to have easily built the half sunk or above water buildings he sees later. 

Nearly six months pass before he happens upon a town far enough up a mountain that floating boat houses are easily chained to the stone below. Matthew’s momentarily bewildered before he sees someone swim up to a strange dock and walk away a few moments later. 

He stares, stunned, and the utter lack of reaction from anyone around him a further shock. Then a flash of a sheriff's badge and the sudden possibility of wanted posters lurking sends him skittering out of town once his errands are done, any attempt to leave the lake gone for the time being.

It also doesn’t occur to him to _want_ to leave.

It’s comfortable down there, peaceful and quiet and full of dark forests made of still living trees. Full of odd, interesting things too. Fish are common, of course, schools flitting around branches like the birds used to, otters and beavers delighting in the new playgrounds. 

No one is actually sure what happened to the beasts who used to roam here. Some animals had vanished without a trace, but cattle herds and such were sometimes found wandering the far off shores of the lake none the worse for wear, so most folks assumed the same was for deer and the like. 

(matthew thought he saw a deer once, deep in one of the lake’s many canyons. its fur looked more like bare hide and as it swung its great antlered head toward him he saw that its legs just kept going and bent like there were no bones-

he’d fled straight up the nearest cliff side, and would find himself in an abandoned town with an empty church later that day)

\---


	2. Chapter 2

\-----

“What do you think’s down there?” Arabella asks no one in particular.

She’s near the edge of the cliff they’re camped on, one hand holding onto a nearby tree branch like she can still fall into the yawning abyss below. They’d been sticking to the ridges of the mountains they were traveling through, partially because that’s where most of the towns have ended up.

And partially because once you get into the deeper valleys things tend to get. Strange. And incredibly dark, the great mountain shadows meeting slender canyons and only two of their number could see in the dark.

(arabella thinks clayton might be getting there, though, his eyes have started to glint dimly in the campfire light when they make camp in the air, which is a little odd because she doesn’t think his teeth have changed all that much yet)

In any case all she can see is the faint shapes of rocky outcroppings and what may be the tips of trees, far below. Swearengen’s job had sent them miles out from town chasing rumors of bandits that had turned out to be a mite more complex than expected, what with the spell throwing and all. They were finally on their way back a week later, and had found a safe place to sleep for the night. 

Which happened to be near a cliff that falls away into the dark. 

“Weird shit,” Clayton replies from where he’s helping set up the bedrolls around the base of the tree they’ve chosen. 

Aly tends to sleep out of the water when possible, setting up a neat hammock and portable firepot in some hefty tree branches and the rest of them have mostly followed suit. Matthew usually sleeps in the water after the third nasty fall out of a tree in the middle of the night, and Clayton often stays with him, citing Matthew’s abysmal ability to wake up at speed.

(this is a blatant lie arabella has decided to let slide, as she’s seen matthew startled awake versus simply woken in the mornings and one involves a very high chance of the unlucky danger getting shot, but gods know those boys are terrible at admitting any sort of feelings)

“Would you like to be more specific,” Arabella calls back, sidling away from the edge. She knows full well that she could simply swim right over but there was something about the sheer _depth_ of the void below them that sent all of her hindbrain to screaming. 

“Nah,” Clayton deadpans and she hears Matthew snort a laugh. Miriam and Aly have already settled themselves in the hammocks above, and Arabella had actually set her own up already but she had wanted to check out the cliff. 

“What about you, Reverend, any ideas on what lurk in the lake’s depths?”

Matthew blinks at here where he’s settled on his bedroll, long tail curling along the base of the tree. 

“Empty towns, mostly,” he says with a confidence that makes Clayton and Arabella look at him in surprise, “either emptied out before the lake came or not long after. There are some strange creatures, of course, I once saw a bear swimming around, but it uh- it had too many legs.”

Arabella stares at him. 

“You sound like you’ve been down there a fair few times,” Clayton says, eyebrow raised.

“Ah, it was uh, it was when I first arrived in the Lake I was in a region without very many towns. My uh, my introduction to the Lake wasn’t really near much at all. So I just sort of, wandered.”

“Huh,” Arabella says, and glances back towards the cliff edge.

“Perhaps any curiosity can wait until daylight,” Clayton says, eyeing her. 

“Perhaps,” she smiles back at him, unrepentant, and heads for the tree to get into her hammock.

\-----


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> snippets include a possible later misadventure feat. Miriam and Clayton, conversations and a scene that got cut from the main story

\---

"Miriam, how long has it been since you left the Lake?"

The train station at Deadwood was little more than a covered platform with a tiny ticket office sequestered off to the side. The morning sun was glittering on the water's surface, and Miriam was staring down the tracks, newly repainted claws fiddling with the purse in her lap. 

She startles slightly at the question, which is so damn uncharacteristic Clayton raises an eyebrow. 

"Oh, I've left quite often for business of course usually down south near the shores around Cheyenne."

She's not looking at him, still watching for the train. Arabella had all but thrown one of her fancier hats at her when they'd all met up at the Gem, mumbling something about never wearing them anymore and it'd look better on Miriam anyway. 

Clayton might’ve believed her if he'd ever seen the hat before and he didn't see her and Aly pickin' it out a couple weeks ago.

In any case Miriam ain't very practiced at hiding her face with it yet, too used to staring people down.

"That's a never then," Clayton replies. 

That gets Miriam to look at him at least, even if it's a bit of a glare. The sun catches the scales along her cheekbones and turns the dark a bright purple.

"It'll be fine," he says a little clumsily, "I'll back you up."

Miriam smiles suddenly, laughter crinkling the edges of her eyes. "Mister Sharpe are you suggesting I intimidate my way out of every awkward situation?"

"Works for me," Clayton mumbles, and settles to wait for the train as Miriam laughs.

(miriam later notices that at some point clayton had taken his gloves off, dark claws in full view)

\---

“Miriam,” Matthew says, “I’m not actually sure if Arabella knows anything about merfolk body language.”

Miriam looks up from where she’d been idly paging through a catalog and spots Arabella smiling at a young man she must’ve decided had some information she wanted. Arabella’s genteel smile was rather belied by the way the spikes on her fins were flared in pure aggression, which was alarming and confusing the poor man she was speaking with. 

“I think I see what you mean,” Miriam says. 

The trick to learning mer body language was the same as learning human of course, as was controlling it. You simply had to know what you were doing and why, and you could appear as harmlessly charming or as threatening as you wished.

Miriam runs that thought through her head again and glances back over at the Reverend, who is watching Arabella’s encounter with relaxed shoulders and fins, even though Miriam _knows_ he’d be across the Gem in a split second if Arabella seemed even somewhat distressed.

“If I may be so bold it seems you know quite a bit on the subject yourself,” Miriam says, and is gifted with a twitch of surprise. She raises an eyebrow at him when he glances over at her.

“The cavalry wasn’t all you left behind, was it dear Reverend?”

He looks at her for a long moment and she catches a flicker of nervousness before he shifts his shoulders and tail and suddenly the man next to her is a stone cold killer. He smiles at her crookedly and Miriam is actually a bit impressed. 

“Indeed it wasn’t,” he replies and goodness even his voice has changed. 

There’s still nerves around the edges of his expression, like he’s isn’t comfortable directing this at friends and Miriam absently reaches out to pat his arm.

“Not bad at all, dear Matthew,” she says, “I’ll be sure to direct Arabella to you when we get to threats.”

Matthew snorts a laugh and relaxes back to his usual softness, and Miriam gets up to rescue the poor young man from Arabella.

\---

Blood hangs in the water.

This seems self evident, a liquid in a liquid would disperse differently than in falling in air or seeping into the dirt.

It's an obvious notion that doesn't ever enter Matthew's head until his first fight as a mer, caught up in a nasty barfight turned deadly as knives and guns were gripped in pissed, drunken hands. 

Matthew was just trying to get out of the way, still slightly clumsy with his overlong tail and someone slams into his back and Matthew panics and feels a muscle in his back _flex_ and then he's spinning away and his assailant is screaming and bleeding from gashes across his side and-

There's blood hanging in the water like smoke, trails from bleeding noses and knife wounds in visible wakes of violence and Matthew has to _get out_ and his opponent is still yowling but no one is paying attention there's so much yelling-

Matthew ends up going out an open window. It's nearly half an hour later, hiding in an alleyway well at the other end of town does he dare try and feel his fins for whatever the hell put wounds on the other man-

Stiff, sharp spokes at the base of his fin near his lower back meet his fingertips.

Oh. He has spines. That's. Good to know. 

He drops his hand. 

Okay then.

\---


End file.
